


In the Thick of It

by mcgarrygirl78



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Drama, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4763420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcgarrygirl78/pseuds/mcgarrygirl78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How will you keep Captain America and the rest of the Avengers off the case?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Thick of It

The house was well lit but seemed empty. Dave put his umbrella, go bag, and coat away before walking further in. Mudgie wasn’t there to greet him but these days that wasn’t so unusual. He'd lost his dog to his wife years ago…Dave considered it a special occasion to get a canine greeting even if he was gone on longer trips. This time it had only been four days in Gadsden, Alabama. 

Walking into the dining room, the music of Carole King filled his ears. Erin must have been in the den enjoying a quiet evening. But he walked in to see, the room was empty. At least it was empty of people. Two laptops were open and there were at least 20 files scattered across the table. He recognized his wife’s color coding system. 

He didn’t know what it meant but he knew that Erin had a near aversive to manila folders. She would separate information by color for everything from budgets to punishments to assignments. 100 different things could’ve been in any of those folders. Dave swallowed his first instinct to at least leaf through one. She was his Section Chief and he had no right to interfere in anything she might be doing for the Bureau. If he was caught doing so the punishment would be swift and harsh. 

There was something more important to Dave than all of that paperwork anyway…he still hadn’t found his wife. She wasn’t in the kitchen but he saw her out on the deck. It had been raining in the Corridor all day, steady but not pouring. Erin was standing up; he saw the cigarette smoke filter around her face. Mudgie was close by but even he seemed to be giving her personal space. That was incredibly rare.

“Hey baby, I'm…” Dave stopped when his wife screamed. It wasn’t a bloody murder scream but when she turned to look at him there was alarm in her blue-green eyes. “What's the matter, Erin?”

“I wasn’t expecting you for a couple of days.” She replied. There was a feeble effort to get herself together but it wasn’t going well. She just kept smoking her cigarette. Her hand was trembling but that could be attributed to the chill in the air.

“We've been playing phone tag for days.” Rossi said. “I would’ve been worried but I called your mom and Kirk and they'd both spoken to you even when I couldn’t reach you. I called a couple of hours ago to let you know I was coming back to Quantico tonight. It looks like you brought work home.”

“I thought I was going to be alone.”

“The whole flight home I was thinking about a nice, romantic dinner. There's steak in the fridge and a couple of artichokes…we can do it up nice.”

“I'm, I'm not really hungry.” Erin couldn’t look him in the eyes when she said it. “I'm sorry, David.”

“It’s OK. Looks like you were having a long day anyway. Whatever it is I guess it requires two laptops.”

“You didn’t look at any of that paperwork, did you?”

The way she went back into Strauss mode shocked Dave. Maybe it was more than next year’s budgets Erin was perusing. Maybe it was something that was a bad idea to look at while in Quantico and that’s why she brought it home. His wife was jittery, and that was a word no one would ever use when describing Erin Strauss. She almost seemed afraid. Was there something in those papers or on those computers that could destroy careers or lives? Quick with a cheeky response, especially with Strauss, Dave didn’t even bother tonight.

“I was looking for you. All I did was see the papers…I didn’t touch a thing.”

“Some of it is classified.” Her tone calmed some.

“Should things like that be better worked at Quantico?” he asked.

“I've worked late for the past three nights; I just wanted to come home. Was packing classified information into boxes and having Agent Anderson bring it to my car the best idea I ever had, surely not. But I did it. The originals are exactly where they're supposed to be. These are copies.”

“Well I will leave you to it.” Dave felt very uncomfortable in this conversation but couldn’t figure out why. There were two Bureau cars sitting outside his house tonight. They would be there until the budget ran out or the Replicator was caught. He didn’t even like leaving Erin alone. 

Though no other information about the Section Chief had come up, surveillance of her was in the first set of pictures the BAU received. Whoever this person was knew where she lived and most likely her routine. This guy wasn’t playing the same game Foyet had been years before. He didn’t want to tease and scare. 

He was out there right now methodically planning his next act; when it was ready someone would be killed. Dave would do everything in his power to make sure it wasn’t someone he loved. Yes, they'd been taken off the case but that never stopped them before. “How about some cornbread instead?”

“Hmm?” Erin looked up from her phone, which received a lot of her attention tonight.

“I was thinking of making a pan of cornbread. You know, the really good kind that we slather in butter and only eat twice a year. Seems like you had a rough couple of days here. I did too…we can come down together.”

“That sounds nice.” She smiled. “I haven’t had much of an appetite lately; I could probably use something that will stick to my ribs.” The buzzing phone in her hand seemed to startle her. She looked at the display, at her husband, and then the display again. “I have to take this, excuse me.”

She put her cigarette and walked past him into the house. Dave had no idea what was going on. It was like walking into his life but into some kind of alternate version of it. Yes, that woman was his wife but she seemed nervous and out of sorts. While Erin could be that way it was rare. 

He caught little snippets of the conversation as she walked by ‘took you long enough’, ‘I need to know I can trust you’, ‘how many’. If it was anyone other than Erin his mind would’ve wandered from a big drug buy to an armored car heist. His wife wasn’t the type for those shenanigans. But something was on her mind. Dave wasn’t even supposed to know about it…he was supposed to still be in Alabama. Except he was home. 

He was home and very out of the loop. It might just be better to not even attempt to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. He and Erin had been on shaky ground with the BAU being ordered by the Director off of the Replicator case. She put a lot at risk to keep them on but didn’t win that battle in the end. 

Now Dave had to put all of his time into working other cases around the country when someone in their own backyard was painting targets on their backs. He wanted to stop thinking about it. It would be better to go inside, make some comfort food for him and his wife, and let it go. That would probably only hold for a few hours but didn’t the couple at least deserve that.

“The email address is untraceable.” Erin said as she came back onto the deck. She went over to the table, grabbed another cigarette, and lit it. “Once I have all the information I need then it no longer exists.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. 

Dave tried not to pay too much attention but there was only about seven feet between them. Erin hadn’t told him to leave so he wasn’t in much rush to walk away. “I do know what I'm doing, Mark, and you do as well. It’s not going to fall on you. Well that’s my decision to make, isn't it? I need the full list by the morning. 

“I swear to God I won't ask you for another thing afterward…it’ll be like we don’t even know each other. What if I'm _wrong_? I want to be wrong but I'm never going to know without all the information up close. What are you afraid of? Did someone threaten you? 

“You're a United States Senator; there are laws against that. Those are actually the laws that police enforce. Just send me the list and you'll never hear from me again. Yes, I’ll owe you a favor. Yes I'm good for it…stop stalling. I have your back and so does Kirk, that’s a promise. 

“Well, I don’t live in your state so I can't vote for you. You do know hustling for votes this way is illegal, right? Yes, I have your back. Yes. I already know the answer to if you have mine. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and put it down on the table. Then she turned to look at her husband. “Politics are a real son of a bitch.”

“We've had that conversation more times than I care to count.” Dave said. “What _are_ you working on?”

“Off the record, a possible breach into a highly classified system. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

“That’s all I need to hear.” Dave held up his hands. Then he held one out for his wife. “If you have the time and energy, a hello hug and kiss would really put my mind at ease.”

Erin smiled again, quickly walking into his waiting arms. It was good to have him home again. She'd been alone for four days and while that was nothing unusual, there was someone out there watching them. Sadly, over the past few years that wasn’t so unusual either. Inwardly, she tried to fear nothing. Outwardly, the BAU was one more tragedy or mistake away from a lot of people losing their jobs. 

Erin didn’t want that on her watch. She didn’t want to be one of the people on the bread line. Better to fire the team leader and bring in someone the Director felt was more under his sway. She wasn’t working so hard on this to lose her job but whatever came after, she was going to fix this. Something was very wrong and there were people who were complicit in it without even realizing. Maybe some of them had realized by now and were trying to clean up what could be a large and toxic mess. Erin Strauss might have to change her name to Jack Ryan to get all of this figured out.

“Are you really going to make that cornbread?” she asked, still breathless from Dave’s last kiss. “I may have been slightly off on not being hungry.”

“I will, and then you can get back to your work.”

“It’s gonna be a late night for me.”

“I won't interrupt.” Dave shook his head. “If you need anything, you know where to find me. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Tea would be better. I need something to relax me but also keep my awake. Coffee would be too strong at this hour.”

“Then tea it is.” Dave kissed her forehead and turned to go into the kitchen. He would add a little brandy. There was no point in being up and having the jitters; she needed some calm in her universe at the moment.

Erin folded her arms, looking out at the rain. She decided against a third cigarette…this thing was making her smoke more than ever. She needed to calm down; no doubt the headache creeping around her skull was from rising blood pressure. She’d had it in one form or another for nearly a week. Whenever she got in bed tonight Erin would go for Excedrin and Ambien, crossing her fingers she woke with a clear head in the morning instead of slipping into some pill induced coma in the night.

***

“What time is it?” Dave grumbled as his wife climbed into bed and spooned behind him.

“I have no idea.” Erin replied, kissing the nape of the neck.

“You all done with work?” he turned and kissed her nose.

“Oh how I wish. Let’s say I'm done for the night and leave it at that.”

“You wanna stop talking, Mrs. Rossi?”

“What I want…”

Erin’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. It surprised her but she reached over to grab it. That’s when she saw that it was 2:39 a.m. As soon as she saw the name on the display she was sure her blood pressure went up once more.

“Are you alright?” she asked instead of saying hello.

“What are you doing?”

“You called me.”

“Don’t be smart with me, young lady.”

“Don’t call me young lady.” Erin sighed. She just looked at her husband before climbing out of the bed. She went into the bathroom, pushing the door up but not closing it. “It’s damn near three in the morning.”

“I've had a long night.” Kirk said.

“That’s something we can agree on.”

“What are you doing, Erin?”

“My job. Something isn't right and I'm not going to let my people take the fall. Our lives are in danger. There is another maniac with his sights on the BAU. This has to be a record.”

“You might be getting in too deep.”

“So I'm supposed to let the so-called Replicator run the show?” she asked. “I'm getting out ahead of him this time.”

“ _You're_ getting out ahead of him?”

“The Director pulled Agent Hotchner and his team off the case, which you already knew. Despite what I said at an earlier time, I'm not inclined to think that was a bad idea. But we all know how Hotchner is. I'm not letting this goddamn team go rogue on my watch again.”

“Do you know what you're doing?” Kirk asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“No, but I won't rest until I know it’s not an inside job.” She replied.

“You're thinking that someone in the federal government, with an astronomical clearance level, is a serial killer.”

“I'm thinking someone may have an ax to grind and who gets in their way matters little to them.”

“You realize that you're about to get in their way.” Kirk said.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“No one. Agent Anderson copied all the paperwork for me but it was random files and he had no idea what it was for. He also cleared the printer memory, putting it back to default settings when he was done on my orders. He's been with the Bureau a long time…he has nothing to say on the subject.”

“Someone else knows.”

“Did he really call you? I'm the Section Chief of the goddamn NCAVC, my word is good. He didn’t have to call my dad to make sure.”

“Well you threw in your dad’s name for the extra espresso shot of credibility.” Kirk said.

“Mark Cramer owes me so many favors…he shouldn’t have come to you with this. He chose not to recuse himself for the committee hearings so this is on him.”

“He knows that.”

“Don’t defend him, Kirk.” Erin said through clenched teeth.

“I'm not. He should’ve recused himself, you're right. But one doesn’t get on CNN nightly for weeks if they do such a thing. Never forget he is first a politician.”

“Is he going to get me what I asked for?”

“I already have it. He didn’t think it was a good idea, and I agreed, for you two to be seen near each other. You and I on the other hand are par for the course. It’s a short list, Erin.”

“As I expected.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm not telling you. If this blows up in my face I'm not bringing you down too.”

“If you thought there was even the chance of this blowing up you wouldn’t be doing it. I need you to be careful.”

“I am.”

“How will you keep Captain America and the rest of the Avengers off the case?” Kirk asked.

“I'm going to overwhelm them with work in other cities. It’s not as if we don’t have plenty of requests for help to do just that. I already have a plan in place; I'm not going to be under for longer than a minute.”

“And it’s not going to come back to you?”

“I hope not. But if I'm right none of that will matter. I got this. I don’t have a choice…someone is out to hurt my team. Someone is out to hurt me. We've gotten knocked down too many times. If it happens once more I don’t know if we’ll get back up. When can you get me the list?”

“The day after tomorrow. I also called in a favor so Mark has no need to call you about anything.”

“What did he want?” Erin asked. She didn’t even want to know but her curiosity got the better of her.

“This will make you laugh.” Kirk said. “He wants to be on the short list.”

“There are about 100 political short lists in DC. You're going to have to be more specific.”

“RNC Vice-Presidential short list.”

“Shut up.” She covered her mouth so Dave wouldn’t hear her laugh. “Who aspires to be Vice-President?”

“It’s a very lucrative position…he would be President of the Senate. A fair amount of unknowns have taken the position into the stratosphere. Not to mention that it’s often from the Congress that a second man is picked. He knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted the favor from me all along.”

“Bastard.” She mumbled.

“That’s one word for it.”

“I need to get some sleep.”

“Just promise me once more that you're not putting yourself in anymore danger than you could already be in?” Kirk asked.

“Cross my heart. His hubris will bring him out of hiding sooner rather than later. If I'm right our suspect list will go from infinite to a dozen. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“Did you get this ridiculously fierce determination to fix nearly unfixable shit from me?”

“Probably. I gotta go.”

“Keep your head in the game, your eyes on everything, and I love you.”

“I love you too. Goodnight.”

Erin hung up the phone and went back into the bedroom. It looked as if Dave was asleep again. That was good since sex was the last thing on her mind. She didn’t even know if she was going to get much sleep. Turning back for the bathroom, Erin pulled her Ambien from the medicine cabinet. 

She got a half-glass of water from the spigot and washed one down. Looking at herself in the mirror, Erin could see how tired she was. There were bags under her eyes and there was nothing attractive about that. It was late March; hopefully the coming spring would bring some color back into her cheeks. There was a part of Erin that was scared. 

She took over the NCAVC nearly ten years ago…the BAU fell under that blanket. It seemed as if the moment she became Section Chief, one particular unit kept her up at night. BAU-1 worked well. Her counterterrorism squad, which including the esteemed Jordan Todd, got the job done time and time again. 

BAU-3 had its share of rough cases dealing with children but they were a tough group of agents. Mary Kate Cole was a godsend. BAU-2 were her cybercrimes and white collar people. These were the people who could go through lulls of nothing much and then be hot on a case for six months. When the game was on, all the players were in place. 

But that damn BAU-4, Crimes against Adults…everything that could go wrong would. So far in 6 years two different serial killers had escaped and killed significant others of her team members. A psycho deputy sheriff shot a tech analyst. A serial killer had kidnapped a team member and got him hooked on opiates. A team member lured a suspect who stood a serious chance of getting away with his crimes and she murdered him. 

And of course there was the kidnapping, near killing, fake death, and resurrection of Emily Prentiss. That would get at least one chapter in Erin’s memoir. Their jobs were difficult. They could tear families apart and cause agents to become involved in ways that technically violated the rules. The BAU was its own little soap opera set in a high school attended by people well over the age of acting the way they sometimes chose to. 

But this wasn’t a messy affair or even a team cutting some corners when it came to apprehending the right people. This was another maniac, and the scary part was Erin was almost 100% sure he or she was in their midst. It didn’t make sense any other way. Copycat murders happened more often than law enforcement or the media discussed. But these were more than that. This Unsub was called The Replicator because he was replicating murder scenes down to the last detail. Too many of those details weren't released to the press. 

And looking for them from city to city to choose would put a backlog or paper trace somewhere. It might take them a long time to find it but when they did, the Unsub would be obvious. But if this person had all that information at his fingertips, could walk in and out of cyber files in mere seconds…that changed the game. Erin had no idea where he would strike next but she did know that there were a few files in particular he might find to his liking. She worked very hard to make sure of that.

Looking at herself in the mirror once more, Erin tried but couldn’t smile. She turned the bathroom light out and made tentative steps back to her big ass bed. This time she got in, spooned behind her husband, and didn’t plan to let go.

“I love you, David.” She murmured against his shoulder.

“Love you too, baby. Get some sleep.”

She wasn’t sure if she would be able to do that. Erin had to wait until the day after tomorrow to get her hands on that list. Surely it wasn’t more than 12 to 15 names…the cream of the crop. The idea that one may be a psychopath made her shudder. But having those tendencies, often not coupled with being a murderer, did make a person strive to be top dog. Who they knocked down on the way up mattered little. 

She was reminded of James Stanworth, who committed a vicious murder in his young adult years that he let an innocent man spend 25 years in prison for. He went on to become a corporate scion who got off on stripping corporations, putting thousands out of work. If they hadn’t caught him when they did he surely would’ve won that Council race and started a political career nothing short of Manchurian. The person she was dealing with now was already in. 

He also had more murders under his belt than Stanworth and no desire to stop. There had to be an endgame. Erin thought about it for over a week until her head hurt. She didn’t know if it was the entire team he was targeting or trying to throw them off so he could attack someone in particular. Not to mention that these team members had loved ones, children, that didn’t need to be mixed up in this insanity.

“Stop thinking about it.” She mumbled to herself as she turned over on her back. 

The ceiling fan was on very low; Dave often got warm at night. Shadows from the rain soaked windows dance across the walls as well as the ceiling. Erin needed to let the Ambien work. All of this would be here in the morning; it had been for many mornings. It should’ve been easier to rest knowing she was doing everything to put a stop to it. 

Nothing was as easy as it used to be…the whole world was hard. That didn’t mean that Erin Strauss was going to let anyone take her or the people she loved out of it. This needed to be over. The ball was in her court and the Replicator had no idea how good her game was.

***


End file.
